when the skeletons in your closet don't know when to shut up

The American Dreamer

By: S. DiSparti

If there ever was a perfect dream, what would mine be? That proverbial American dream that America strives and dies for? Perhaps. Yes, I have a beautiful wife and daughter, but I have a dead-end job that ends at a small desk with four insurmountable walls; a number-crunching rat in a cage, feverishly looking for a way out. And these dreams still pervade my every day. Dreams of becoming a rock star, an actor, a painter, even a circus carny; just something different, or more accurately something with less responsibility. But what can I do with irresponsibility? What would I have to show for a reckless life?

You think you know what you want and once you’ve acquired it, you want to keep your receipt just in case you want to exchange it. If I could just be single again, young again, thinner again life would be much better…but would it? These are just thoughts that stream across my line of vision as it has for so many others.

If the American Dream is more stress, then I have accomplished that. And I find later in life that that is what the whole reason for human existence is. This biological necessity to keep the species alive, to survive. And the only way for that to happen, one needs to be challenged, to stare into the face of adversity and overcome it. Is that not why I am here?

I see a stranger pass me by and you wonder what their life is like, wondering if theirs is better. If their shoes are more comfortable to walk in than my own. If their dreams parallel my own. The grass is always greener somewhere else; the ever-covetous neighbor. The old envy the young, the poor envy the rich, or the ugly envy the beautiful; it is all immaterial.

These lives all diverge and converge on the same elusive path we struggle to follow. Dreams change as you get older, some die as soon as they are born and some live on, ever-changing, ever-growing into something new. And though some days are harder than others, I know that this was the path I was meant to walk and I wouldn’t walk anywhere else.